In a bid to crack down abusive ads, malwares, and phishing scams, Google, in a report published Thursday, said that it removed billions of ads that violate its policies last year.
The Mountain View company also announced a new Policy Manager for Google Ads to help improve the digital advertising ecosystem.
Billions Of Ads Killed
According to the report, Google blocked 2.3 billion ads in 2018. That's over 6 million ads removed per day or about 75 ads per second. Though still a huge number, in comparison, this is smaller as compared to ads removed in 2017, with more than 3.2 billion bad ads blocked — a total of 100 ads taken down per second.
On a more positive note, in 2018, Google cut ties with nearly 734,000 app developers and publishers and around 1 million advertiser accounts, which is about double the previous year's statistics.
In addition to this, the company said it removed ads that violated its publisher policies in 1.5 million apps and almost 28 million webpages.
Google Ads Policy Manager
Last year, Google added 31 ads policies targeted toward abuses in areas such as cryptocurrency, ticket resellers, third-party tech support, and local services.
"We took down 2.3 billion bad ads in 2018 for violations of both new and existing policies, including nearly 207,000 ads for ticket resellers, over 531,000 ads for bail bonds and approximately 58.8 million phishing ads," Scott Spencer, Google's director of sustainable ads, said in a blogpost.
However, Google's efforts to make digital advertising ecosystem safer don't end here. Moving forward, a new Policy Manager for Google Ads will be available starting April.
The new Policy Manager, similar to the AdSense Policy Center, allows users to check if their ads violate any policy and gives tips and recommendations on how to improve ads to ensure policy compliance. Google said it'll also include features to track appeals history and show account information overview.
